Just as the finishing touches were being made to St. Peter’s
Church – the Parish Church of Buntingford – the
foundation stone was being laid
for the Benson Memorial Church, the Catholic Church for the town. This
was
Spring 1914. In January the following year the Church, dedicated to St.
Richard
of Chichester, was opened for worship.

Large parts of the church were built using
donations from an
anonymous American lady – including the Lady Chapel of 1916, the
porch in 1934
and the tower in 1939. This whole was consecrated in June 1940.

The tower contains a selection of interesting bits
of stone
inserted by Dr. E.C. Messenger, the parish priest of the time,
including stones
from St. John Lateran in Rome, stone from Colosseum in Rome, marble
from the
Roman Catacombs, stones from Athens and the Holy Land and a piece of
wood from
St. Albans Abbey.

The Buntingford Great Flood of 1968 got into the
church and
flood the presbytery to five feet.

It
is odd that the younger Catholic Church is built to a more
traditionally Anglican plan than the older Church of England Church
– another
thing that makes Buntingford a bit more out of the ordinary in its
ecclesiastical ways.